browniebabe #3: Milk Chocolate Brownies with Wattleseed

Woo-hoo! It’s browniebabe time again over at Once Upon a Tart. Myriam continues to taunt us all with her super-cute apron! I’ve already declared my love for all things plain and simple when it comes to brownies, so I really tried hard to think of an uncomplicated brownie that was a little different.

The last time R went to the States was back in February. I gave him a shopping list to stuff to bring back…Crystal hot sauce, Diamond Kosher salt, Jif, Quaker oats, Cascade dishwasher tabs (how this guy made it through customs, I do not know). When he called from the airport while waiting for his flight back to Sydney, I tacked one more last-minute item to the list: a Gourmet magazine from the airport bookshop.

A recipe on the last page of that issue has stuck out in my mind since– milk chocolate brownies. I’m definitely a dark chocolate fan (and the higher the percentage, the better), but this sounded interesting. I went out and got myself a couple bars of Lindt Excellence, which in the same issue, Gourmet named as their preferred milk chocolate for general cooking purposes.

I bought some wattleseed awhile back, but still hadn’t used it. This is something that I’ve had in restaurant desserts here, and was excited to find at my spice shop. Wattleseed is from the Acacia plant, native to Australia, and is often described as tasting like a combination of chocolate, coffee and hazelnut. All good things for a brownie I think, so I eye-balled in a couple teaspoons to the recipe. I don’t think wattleseed is readily available outside Australia, but a little instant espresso powder will do the trick if you are looking to make the flavor a bit deeper (I always put it in my dark chocolate brownies anyway).

These brownies were surprisingly good, and I’d definitely make them again. They had a perfect texture–crackly tops and chewy, but not raw, centers. They were thankfully not as sweet as I’d imagined they would be. They had a nice caramely flavor from the chocolate with a hint of coffee from the wattleseed. The seeds and the extra milk chocolate that gets stirred in as chips at the end give the brownies a little crunch.

If you want the basic milk chocolate brownie recipe, you can find it in the February 2007 issue of Gourmet magazine, or here on Epicuious.